


rest in peace, the haunting's free

by theheadgirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Haunted Mansion (Ride)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Halloween, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:40:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theheadgirl/pseuds/theheadgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls, when an Apparition goes wrong and a time machine shuts down unexpectedly ... that is the time when our past can come back to haunt us, sometimes much more literally than expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rest in peace, the haunting's free

It is, unfortunately, a dark and stormy night. The dark is not what makes it unfortunate. It might be rather more unfortunate if it were a brightly lit night. Alas, though, the storm really is unfortunate - especially for anyone who happened to pop onto this particular corner of the Scottish moors unexpectedly.

There is a sound like a gunshot, though it is swallowed by a clap of thunder. Another follows a moment later, then a third.

"Where the hell are we?" one of them yells, though from his accent, he sounds like he ought to know better.

"I don't know!" one of his companions yells back, pitching her voice to be heard over the rain. "I just thought we needed to be _away_ \- "

"The sodding moors in the middle of a monsoon counts as pretty well _away_ , I think!"

The third of their party has been silent, standing, swaying slightly. Lightning illuminates his face for a moment, showing a dazed look of shock, and a pallor that seems a little too green to be solely the product of the lightning. Without further ado, he collapses.

"Perce!" The man bolts over to gather his companion into a sitting position, away from the soaked grass, though the steady rain means any hope of staying dry is long gone. "Are you okay?"

"The Apparition, I think I broke something - " He gestures to his leg in a vague sort of way.

"We need to get him to St. Mungo's!” says the woman, her voice pitchy with panic.

"We can't move him like this!” the man snaps back.

"He can hear you!” the man with the broken leg interjects. “And it's going to be a moot point when we get struck by lightning and die!”

The woman looks around frantically, pushing drenched curls out of her eyes. “There!” She points. A narratively convenient strike of lightning hits just then, illuminating a tall, imposing mansion not far off . “We’ll spend the night there, and leave in the morning.”

“Can you walk?” Oliver asks.

“With help, I think.”

Oliver gets up and bends, slinging one of Percy's arms over his shoulder, and cinching his own firmly around the other man's waist.  Percy grits his teeth as he puts weight on his bad leg, and they set off with Hermione in the lead, holding her lit wand aloft to check for obstacles.

When they arrive, soaked to the bone, even the overhang on the porch is a relief.

“You come from a savage place, Oliver,” Percy says. He wipes ineffectually at his glasses, succeeding only in smearing them more completely with water, and gives it up as a bad job.

“Oi,” Oliver protests but there's very little actual reproach in his voice, since right now Percy does make a pretty good point.

This close, the house is clearly dark and silent, and in a state of disrepair.

“I guess we don't need to come up with a story for the owners,” Hermione says uncertainly. She reaches for the front door, but just before her fingers brush the knob, it swings open. She jerks her hand back like she's been burned, staring into the dark and entryway.

“Hello?” she calls. The silence seems to swallow her voice, drawing it into the cobwebs and absorbing it, somehow making it thicker.

“Let's get inside anyway,” Oliver says with a quick, worried glance at Percy. The redhead is holding together admirably, but he sure they'd all feel better once he's not upright.

Hermione goes in first, before Oliver can protest. He follows a moment later, still supporting Percy. The inside is just as ragged as the outside: every surface is covered in a thick layer of dust, and cobwebs cover the corners in silky layers. With his free hand, Percy reaches out and drags a finger through the dust. A thick covering of grey coats the tip when he lifts it, examining it carefully.

“I think we've missed the owners by a few decades,” he says.

They find a room immediately off of the main hallway, and Oliver carefully lowers Percy to one of the couches. It coughs up a puff of dust that sticks to his soaked jeans. He wrinkles his nose in distaste and makes a vain attempt to brush it off.

“Stop fussing,” Oliver says firmly. “Hermione, can you do anything about light in here?”

“I don't know about turning the lights back on, but -” Hermione puts her purse on the table with a much more substantial thunk then such a small bag would seem to account for, then sticks her whole arm into it before finding a small glass jar. She sticks the tip of her wand into it and murmurs an incantation, filling the bottom with bright bluebell flames. The light isn't too wide but it does light a small area very well. When she sets it near Percy, it paints him with a flickering, bluish glow, but one that is perfectly sufficient for Oliver to work by.

“You're a miracle worker,” he tells her, giving her such an honest, open smile that she blushes. While he checks over Percy's leg, Hermione uses a Hot-Air charm to dry off her clothes somewhat, then does some investigating of her own. She'd taken the room for a parlor at first, but the bluebell flames illuminate dozens and dozens and dozens of books. Some have their titles picked out in gilt letters, and others are covered in decorative patterns. None of them have been disturbed in some time.

“Oliver?” she says.

“Hm?” He looks over, just as she looks over her shoulder at him. For a moment, it catches her at just the right angle so her eyes are hidden in shadow. She holds up one of the books.

“These are all ghost stories.”

 

Out back, behind this crumbling testament to man's hubris, there is a graveyard. Naturally. It is small, housing no more than fifteen or so occupants, the majority of whom are here for the long haul. Most of the grass has grown high and wild, so only the top halves of the headstones peek out over it. Although wind and rain have smoothed their faces, some names are still readable.

In a bare patch near the rusting wrought iron fence, something begins to materialize. Although it's muffled by the rain, there is still a sound almost like elephants trumpeting, and a bright blue light flashes across the sodden ground.

The graveyard has gained two more occupants, though these are rather more - transient than the usual.

In the moment before the blue box opens, the world seems to be holding its breath.

The door swings open with an audible creak, and a blonde young woman stares out into the pouring rain, distinctly unimpressed.

“If you're trying to show me Scotland in a way I haven't seen it before,” she calls over her shoulder, “then I've got some bad news for you.”

“What?” A thin man in a pinstriped suit bolts up behind her, raking a hand through impossibly tousled dark hair, making it even messier. “No, October 31st, 2000, one of the biggest Halloweens in history…” His voice trails off. “It's raining.”

“It's raining,” Rose confirms. “And no one's celebrated much here for a while.” She points to the overgrown grass bending in the steady patter of the rain.

The Doctor chances sticking his head out of the TARDIS for a moment, taking in their surroundings at a glance. In profile, his eyes widen slightly, then narrow, then Rose thinks she sees him mouth the word ‘nah.’ When he sticks his head back in, he looks utterly unflapped, though a bit wet, so perhaps she imagined it.

“Mansion out there. Spooky looking. Could be haunted. Make it a proper Halloween after all.” He grins. “You in?”

“I'm not going out there in that,” Rose begins, but before she can finish, everything in the TARDIS goes dark and silent. The Doctor lets out a yelp and runs to the main console, tapping at buttons and flipping levers frantically. Nothing happens. He tries different buttons on the other side. Still nothing. He brings his hand down on the console, hard.

“Oh, my God, I hit her,” he says, then flings himself onto the console, arms akimbo, face pressed to the still-warm surface. “I'm sorry, please don't be cross. Wake up.”

Despite this heartwarming show of regret, absolutely nothing happens.

“What's happened?” says Rose, who has watched all of this unfold with understandable concern. She reaches out and prods at the main console.

“Something switched off the TARDIS,” the Doctor answers. He straightens up and spins, looking around the dark and silent room. “It's still here, still working, but just... off. Like if you're trying to turn on the lights but someone's turned off the circuit breaker. Your lights still work, but -”

“But their power source is gone,” Rose finishes. “Who could do that to the TARDIS?”

The Doctor sucks his teeth thoughtfully. “No idea. But if I had to take a guess, I would say that -” he points to the general direction of the house -  “probably has something to do with it. Don't think it's coincidence that the TARDIS cuts off near a storybook haunted house.”

Rose looks out the door at the pouring rain but when she looks back, her teeth have caught the corner of her lower lip, pulling it into a mischievous smile. “Gonna have to make a run for it, then?”

In answer, the Doctor pulls his jacket over his head. “Race you.”

As they take off through the cemetery, someone watches them go. The rain doesn't seem to affect her, and her feet don't quite touch the ground. She turns and sizes up the TARDIS, then looks back, her face twisting into an ugly look of rage. Then she's gone.

 

Although Hermione was the first one in, Oliver insists that it's got to be him that scouts out the rest of the house.

“If there's some squatter here, you can't just hex him and have done with it,” he points out with irritatingly flawless logic. “Just in case there is something physical, I'm the best one to do it. Besides,” he grins, “I'm the only one who sounds like I could belong here.”

“They could have been English,” Percy says, just to be contrary, because his leg hurts and denim takes forever to dry, even with a Hot-Air Charm.

“Sure, Perce.” He pats the redhead’s good knee then slings an arm around Hermione's shoulders to give her a quick side hug. “Keep an eye on him. I'll be back in fifteen.”

“Take these,” Hermione says, picking up the jar of bluebell flames and pressing it into his hands. “I've got another jar.”

“Thanks.” Even with the flames and his wand, he looks concerned, and he inhales, exhales, squares his shoulders, and stepped out into the hallway. His footsteps are clearly audible, then fade out.

About five minutes later, there is the distinct sound of a door slamming. Hermione and Percy look at each other, startled, and Percy calls out,

“Oliver, is that you?”

No answer.

“I'm going to have a look,” Hermione announces before even thirty seconds have passed.

“I'll go with you,” Percy offers reflexively. Hermione flashes such a fierce look at him that he feels pinned to the couch by the weight of her disapproval.

“You will stay here,” she orders. “And keep the flames with you. I'll use my wand.”

“And if it's an escaped serial killer with an axe?” Percy asks, but he knows this is like trying to change the mind of the mountain. Once Hermione is set on a course, she'll follow it, come hell or high water.

“Then I will Stun him, yell for Oliver, and put him somewhere safe until morning.” She looks again, anxiously, towards the sound of the slamming door. “I'll be right back. _Lumos_.” With the tip of her wand glowing, she, too, is swallowed up by the dust and darkness.

 

Another door swings open before Oliver can touch the knob. It keeps happening. Once, with the front door, he might have dismissed as an old door improperly settled in its frame. Twice is less easily brushed aside. Now, counting this room, it's been five times. Oliver is certain it's a ghost, but why haven't they said hello? None of the ghosts at Hogwarts would be so bashful.

He steps into the room, holding up the bluebell flames. It's big enough that even held up over his head, the light barely seems to illuminate anything.

“Hello?” he calls, and it echoes and echoes and echoes. The room must be huge, he realizes, listening to his voice as it echoes. He takes a step forward while his eyes adjust to the darkness, and once he's ascertained there's no gaping holes in the floor, he begins to explore.

The floor is made of intricately inlaid parquet wood, and the ceiling is high enough that it's completely lost in the darkness. A long table stretches along one wall, covered with a lace edge tablecloth, though the lace is so moth-eaten there's barely any of it left. Plates, cloth napkins, and silverware are still piled at one end, covered with dust. Further exploration uncovers an arch near another wall. The flowers are all long dead, and when Oliver reaches out to touch one, it dissolves under his fingers.

A wedding arch, he thinks, turning back to the room and lifting the flames above his head again. It's still set up for a wedding. The cake would be on the table, and there would be a band -

He can almost hear the music.

No, wait. He _can_ hear the music. It’s tinny, garbled, like it's coming from underwater, but it's clearly a wedding march.

He takes a few steps back in surprise, looking around. This seems like a Muggle household - maybe a phonograph? Although there’s the ghost…

The room had been empty, but now, suddenly, it's full. There are chairs lined up in rows and a shade in every one, dressed in their old-fashioned finest. None of them seem to notice the living man in their midst, and Oliver decides to take this opportunity to get out. He's used to ghosts, but not ones like this, who repeat the same gesture over and over again. He sees one woman in the front row whisper in the same way to the man next to her at least four times over. Glad that they aren't the inquisitive short, he makes it to the door when he hears a cough. Its not a ‘I need to clear my throat’ cough, but a ‘you could pay attention to me’ cough. It's the only clear sound in the room.

Slowly, Oliver looks up. At the front of the room, framed by the arch, stands a woman in white: a bride, young and beautiful, her bouquet in her hand and her veil pushed back from her face. Her eyes are like wide, dark holes in the otherwise uniform whiteness.

She's looking right at Oliver.

And then she smiles.

  
The door slams teeth-rattlingly loudly behind the Doctor, and he winces, tugs ineffectually at it to pull it into place.

“Decided to go on and wake the dead, then?” Rose jokes. It feels like it’s trying to be a joke, anyway. It was much easier to crack wise about the situation back in the TARDIS. Now, inside what's probably the kitchen, surrounded by the dust and darkness and stillness, it's not quite as funny. The Doctor is right - this does feel like a properly haunted house. Rose hasn't ever really believed in ghosts, but if anywhere would make her start, this would be it.

The Doctor reaches out and drags a finger through the dust on the counter. His fingertip is entirely grey when he pulls it back, and it clings stubbornly to his finger after he tries to rub it off.

“Ought to have a word with the housekeeper here,” the Doctor comments. “They need their pay docked.”

“Pop back about fifty years, you might be able to,” Rose says. She shivers as a few drops of water drip along her neck and down her back.

“Let's have a look round,” the Doctor suggests. He reaches out and takes Rose’s cold, clammy hand in his own, then grins at her. She grins back, and he leads the way out.

As soon as the door opens, the Doctor gets a faceful of brilliant light. He lets out a yelp of surprise and stumbles back, bumping against Rose.

“Er, hello,” he says once he's regained his balance, though he’s still blinking blue and black spots out of his eyes. He puts on his most roguish, charming grin. “Mind turning that down a little?”

Rose thinks her heart is beating so hard it must be visible against her shirt. The light dims slightly, and as her eyes weren't dazzled by the initial flash, she can make out the figure behind the light before the Doctor. Staring back at them, looking just as frightened as Rose feels, is a young woman about her age with dark curly hair and dark eyes. She's clutching what appears to be a stick, but it must be some sort of torch, because that's where the light is coming from.

“Is this your house?” the girl asks. Although she doesn't look any less terrified, there is a defiance to her posture that speaks of an inner bravery.

She is also probably not a ghost.

“That answers that,” says the Doctor. “I was going to have to sit down with you and have a serious talk about your housekeeper if this was your place.”

“So it's not your house, either,” the girl says. She lowers the torch so it's pointing at the floor. Her Converse are dappled with wet spots and the hems of her jeans are still wet. Rose wonders how long she's been here.

“Couldn't pay me enough,” the Doctor replies cheerfully. He sticks out a hand. “I'm the Doctor, this is Rose. You are?”

“Hermione.” She shakes his hand, though she winces a little at the feel of it. “Did you say you're a doctor?”

“Well -” the Doctor begins, but Hermione cuts him off, explaining,

“My friend broke his leg when,” she falters for a moment, “er, earlier.” She rushes on as though to distract them from her stumble. "We've managed to bandage it up and keep him from moving too much, but I know I would feel better if a proper doctor had a look at it."

The Doctor shrugs. "Lead on."

The rest of the house is precisely as dark and creepy as the kitchen. Rose feels like the eyes of the portraits on the walls are following her. She shivers again, and she's sure it's not just from the wet clothes.

Hermione leads them to a large room where they find her companion, a tall, thin red-headed boy with glasses and one leg stuck directly out in front of him. When the door opens, he looks up.

"Hermione, are you - " In the same breath, he spots the Doctor and Rose, and he bolts to his feet, right hand going for the cuff of his left sleeve - or he tries, anyway, before his injured leg send him right back onto the couch in a huge puff of dust. Hermione rushes forward, soothing, hands going to his face, his shoulders, his leg, checking for herself that he's okay.

"Percy, it's okay, they're not - " she looks pointedly at his left wrist, "not ghosts. He's a doctor, he's agreed to have a look at your leg."

"Just have a look," the boy - Percy - repeats, looking at the Doctor suspiciously. The Doctor returns his look with one of his most charming smiles, coming forward with his hands raised.

"Just have a look. Promise."  Still with that same slow movement, he starts to reach for the inside pocket of his jacket -

One face is turned expectantly towards him, and two others - one on either side - are chatting silently, utterly unaware of anything else going on. Rose sucks in a sharp gasp of surprise, eyes darting around the room. One or two translucent figures are reaching up for books and pulling them out, but they look like they're floating. Others are talking, looking out the window - carrying on as though everything is perfectly normal. None of them take any notice of the flesh-and-blood intruders not taking part. The Doctor doesn't even breathe.

As suddenly as they appeared, the shades vanish, leaving the four living occupants untouched, but hardly unshaken.

The Doctor is the first one to move, yanking his sonic screwdriver from his jacket and sweeping it around the room, the little blue light adding to the glow cast by the bluebell flames.

"Percy," he says over his shoulder, "do that _hominem revelio_ spell to see if there's anyone else here."

"It's just Oliver and us," Percy replies, then adds, utterly unconvincingly, "Er, hominem what?"

The Doctor tosses him such a look that Percy has his wand out and is halfway through the incantation before he can even think.

"How do you know about that?" Hermione demands. "You're not a wizard!"

"A wizard?" Rose repeats incredulously. "Like Gandalf?"

"Who?" says Percy.

Before Rose can enlighten him on Tolkien's canon, a pair of boot prints, bright orange and glowing, appear on the floor. They're moving, too, in a way that suggests the owner is in a hurry to be elsewhere.

"Just Oliver," Percy reports as the prints fade into the floor. "I guess he's coming here now."

His prediction proves correct when they hear running footsteps outside, and a figure appears in the doorway.

"Ballroom," he says, out of breath. "Ghosts - wedding - " He stops short when he sees the Doctor and Rose. "Who are they?"

"Hello," the Doctor says brightly. "I'm the Doctor, that's Rose. Sounds like you got a ghost problem in the ballroom, too?"

"Too?" Oliver echoes.

"There were ghosts here, but not like Sir Nicholas," says Hermione. "They were here but they weren't really here."

"That's what it was like over there, too," says Oliver. "There was a wedding arch set up, and tables, then loads of people appeared, but none of them noticed me. Except - " He hesitates.

"Except?" the Doctor prods.

"Except the bride," Oliver finishes. "She was more like Nearly Headless Nick. She looked right at me ... and then she smiled."

"Did she try anything?" Percy asks.

Oliver shakes his head. "I didn't think she wanted to. I think she was just letting me know that she saw me."

The Doctor has gone very still. "What did the bride look like?"

"There's a portrait out in the hallway," Oliver says. "Be easier than telling you." He, the Doctor, and Rose step out, and Oliver holds the bluebell flames up to one of the pictures. Staring back out at them, smiling, is a beautiful young woman with a round face and large dark eyes, her dark hair piled fashionably atop her head. Rose's eyes are caught by the glint of gold at the bottom, and she leans down to breathe on the little plaque, rubbing the cuff of her hoodie on it.

_Clara O. Oswald. 1897-1924._

"Do you know her, Doctor?" Rose asks, looking back at him. He opens his mouth to answer, but another voice cuts him off.

"You could say that. We met."

All three heads snap over to the source of the voice. Though the top of the stairs is pitch black, the figure standing there seems to glow with an internal light. One hand rests lightly on the handrail, and the other on her hip, her head cocked slightly.

"I thought it was you. Don't think a lot of other people travel around in a flying blue box." She makes a circular gesture towards her face. "You've changed your face, though."

"Yeah, do that sometimes," the Doctor replies, though without much of his usual bravado.

The bride - Clara - smiles, but there's no warmth in it. "Wish I could say it's a pleasure. But unlike the Doctor, I don't lie." She vanishes on the spot.

Rose and Oliver both turn to the Doctor, who just shakes his head.

"Study," he says heavily. "I don't want to tell the story twice."

The story, as most things do with the Doctor, begins hopefully and ends tragically. The TARDIS had picked up on an unusual amount of time fluctuation on the Scottish moors ("too far away and too localized to be because of Cardiff," he explains, to the utter confusion of his magical audience), so he'd gone in to have a look. Something had gone wrong with the navigation, though - the TARDIS had responded violently to something she didn't like - and he ended up about twenty years after he'd meant to.

"What," Percy begins.

"Don't ask," Rose advises.

The house, it seems, was not just the center of a temporal fluctuation, but was a magnet for all sorts of unusual phenomenon. The Doctor had never encountered anything quite like it: separately, he could have easily explained the footsteps in an empty hallway, the books floating off of shelves, the faces in the windows, or the sudden, pervasive chill that seems to move entirely randomly through the house. Together, he just couldn't find an explanation that satisfactorily covered everything.

The day he'd arrived had been a big one for the Oswald household. Their only daughter, Clara, was engaged - and today was her wedding day. But her eye had been caught by the handsome stranger who moved through the crowds like a knife, leaving everyone certain that he was here as someone's plus one, but never realizing that everyone else felt the same way.

The Doctor had found Clara before she gone to change and asked her about the house. She told him that the house had always been haunted, and her family had just lived with their phantom guests. Still, the Doctor had urged her to explore the house more thoroughly with him, and it hadn't taken much to get her to say yes. Together they explored the house, the cemetery, the attic. In the attic, they found a yellowing wedding dress and several glittering pieces of jewellery: a bracelet, a necklace, and a tiara. These had belonged to her great-grandmother Melanie, Clara explained, pointing at the label inside one of the boxes. Her great-grandfather had been the last of Melanie's husbands, the previous six having all died under mysterious circumstances. Apparently Clara's mother had been looking for these all week, but had been unable to find them. Great-Grandmother Melanie must have wanted Clara to find them today.

"Something old," Hermione breathes.

After that, Clara had to go, telling the Doctor she had to get down to the wedding but he ought to come to the ceremony, too - there's always room for one more.

So, he had.

The beginning of the wedding was beautiful. The groom was handsome and the room looked like something out of a fairy tale.

As soon as the bride entered the room, though, everything had gone very wrong.

Clara started down the aisle, radiant in her white gown, Melanie's tiara on her head. She barely passed the row where the Doctor sat when a wind suddenly swept through the room and the lights went out. A silvery illumination came from the front of the room, and Clara's grandmother cried out, recognizing her mother. Melanie Oswald stood before them, looking as she had when she had worn that same tiara.

As it turned out, Great-Grandmother Melanie was not quite human. She hailed from a planet called Aythnadus, and her kind had been wiped out by the Time Lords. She had escaped and come to Earth, but she had never forgotten her rage. It had kept her anchored to the Earth even after she died, and when she sensed the presence of a Time Lord, it had been too much for her.

"Melanie lunged for me," the Doctor concludes. "I didn't know how she intended to hurt me, but I found out when Clara got between us."

Hermione gasps, pressing her hands to her mouth, the puzzle pieces of the story falling into place.

"She hit Clara instead. Hit her full force with all that rage, and hatred, and all those years. The human body was never meant to contain so much hate. I don't know what actually, physically, killed her, but I'd guess her good heart was overwhelmed, and she died right there."

The silence is heavy as the Doctor finishes his tale. Percy looks out the door, where Clara's portrait is obscured by shadows again.

"So what do we do?" he asks, ever the practical one. "Only very specific types of magic actually work against ghosts, and none of them are particularly suited for offense."

"Wait, magic," says Rose. "So you actually are a wizard like Gandalf."

"Who?" says Oliver.

"Technically, it's not at all like Gandalf's magic," Hermione begins, but the Doctor cuts her off.

"No time for that right now. The most effective way to get rid of a ghost is to salt the bones and burn them, but she hasn't hurt anyone yet, and I don't want to destroy her. For now, we'll create a border with salt. Rose, Oliver, go to the kitchen and get as much salt as you can. Oliver, magic up more if you have to, then come back here. Hermione, the books - "

"They're all ghost stories," Hermione says.

"Good. Grab a handful and start reading the endings. Maybe we can resolve this peacefully."

He grabs one of the books off the shelf and flips it open randomly, like he’s expecting to find the answer in the first place he looks, in the first book he grabs. A piece of paper flutters out from the leaves of the book, and Rose bends to grab it.

“It’s a newspaper clipping,” she reports, skimming it. Her eyes widen, and she looks up, then clears her throat and begins to read.

“‘Tragedy has once again struck the quiet village of Torrance. The body of Edward Gracey, son of local magistrate William Gracey, was found hanged yesterday morning in the woods behind the Oswald manor. Although there has been no official word from the coroner, it appears that Master Gracey hanged himself just hours after the sudden death of his fiancée, Clara Oswald.”

A silence hangs heavily over the room. The Doctor shakes himself and puts the book on top of the coffee table, then strides towards the door.

"Wait - where are you going?" asks Rose.

The Doctor turns his head, half of his face obscured in shadow. Hermione gets the strangest feeling that he's doing it on purpose.

"I'm going to find her grave. Just in case."

 

Oliver's wand casts a bright but narrow band of light down the hallway as he and Rose make their way to the kitchen.

"So it's not a torch," Rose says.

Oliver shakes his head. "No, it does a lot more than just light up. I'll show you in the kitchen."

The kitchen is lit for a moment by a brilliant flash of lightning, then falls back into darkness, followed by a roll of thunder. By the light of Oliver's wand, they start a cabinet-by-cabinet search, beginning with the lower ones.

Rose opens the last cabinet, then snaps her fingers. "Oi, Oliver, I haven't got night vision goggles." She turns, grinning, then freezes. The wand is balanced on the counter and its owner has vanished. "Oliver!" She bolts to her feet, pushing her drying hair from her face, looking frantically around. She reaches down and grabs the wand, swinging it around the kitchen. "This isn't the time for hide and seek!"

No answer.

Rose inhales, exhales, mind racing. Salt. She needs to get salt to the Doctor, but she can't just leave Oliver to wander around the house, especially without a light. Silently, she curses him for ditching her before they found the salt. At least he left the light. She weighs her options, then hurries to the doorway, swinging the lit end of the wand either direction to see how far he is gone. Of course the hallway is empty.

Salt. She'll get the salt back to the study, then go after Oliver. Luckily, there's only the top row of cabinets left; it won't take long for her to go through.

She turns back to the kitchen, and when she exhales, her breath comes out in a white plume. The cold creeps into her still-damp clothes, clutching her arms like a pair of freezing hands. The Doctor had mentioned cold spots, but he'd made it sound like being sat under the air conditioning at a restaurant. This feels, somehow, much more dangerous.

The cold becomes deeper, more pervasive, and Rose can feel it in her stomach, her throat, squeezing tighter. It's getting harder to breathe. Black gathers at the corners of her eyes, and it all seems to come together -

\- then there is a horrible, disconcerting _pulling_ , and a kitchen maid appears out of Rose. She doesn't even glance over her shoulder to see who she walked through, like it doesn't matter. Like she didn't know. Rose gulps in breath after burning breath, pressing her hand to her stomach. She knows she wasn't actually injured, but she still feels the overwhelming need to keep her guts in.

It takes her a moment to take in the scene that's unfolding before her - a bustling kitchen, filled with people silently preparing for something big. A translucent wedding cake stands on the table, women hovering around it, fussing at the tiny detailing.

Rose can't help but wonder what happened to that cake after the events of the actual wedding. Did they just make it for her wake?

A wake cake.

Utterly inappropriately, Rose lets out a laugh before she claps her hand to her mouth to stifle it. The ghosts have never noticed them before, but Rose doesn't want to be the reason they do now.

Most of the shades don't react, but one - the maid who walked through her, Rose realizes - glances around like she's heard something, then returns to her job. Rose keeps her hand on her mouth, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible.

One moment, they are there. In the blink of an eye, they're gone. In that no hurry to go back in, Rose gives it until the count of ten before resuming the search. The salt - a sizable jar emblazoned with the weirdly familiar Morton Salt girl - is in the first cabinet on the top row. Rose sticks it in the pocket of her hoodie and hurries back to the library. Percy has a pile of books on the coffee table, and Hermione has another armful, and they look up as Rose runs in.

"Where's Oliver?" Hermione asks in the same moment as Percy demands, "Why have you got Oliver's wand?"

"He wandered off when we were looking for salt and left his wand behind," Rose replies tersely. "I'm going to look for him now."

"I'm -" Percy begins.

" _I'm_ going with you," Hermione overrides him. Rose recognizes the emotion that flashes through Percy's eyes - anger at Hermione for overriding him, and anger at himself for feeling so worthless. She wonders why they didn't just magic his broken leg better, and makes a mental note to ask Hermione. "Percy, you're a faster reader than I am. Keep going, and let the Doctor know where we've gone when he gets back."

Percy sighs. The look in his eyes is still lined with anger, and he's clearly not pleased with the arrangement, even though it's obviously the most sensible one. "Fine. Just - " He hesitates. "Just bring Oliver back safely."

"Of course." Hermione leans over and presses a kiss to the redhead’s forehead. It's oddly intimate, and Rose finds herself looking away.

"Rose, let's go." Hermione is already heading to the door, wand in hand. Rose falls into step alongside her.

"So you and Percy," she prompts her. Even in the narrow light cast from Oliver's wand, she can see the brunette's cheeks pink.

"What about us?"

"You're an item."

Hermione hesitates. "Well - yes. We are."

Rose smiles at her. "You're sweet together."

Hermione laughs. It's a lovely sound, and not one that seems to fit in this grim place. "Thank you. I think so, too."

In the kitchen, the joyful mood dissipates as Rose shines her light around the empty room.

"Where was he standing?" Hermione asks. Rose points to the counter and Hermione starts investigating, finally letting out a crow of triumph near the floor. "Come look."

Rose peers closely at the floor and finally picks out some boot prints in the disturbed dust. "Footprints! So he went out that way."

"Precisely. Hopefully the rest of the dust isn't too disturbed." Hermione straightens up. "Let's go."

 

When the Doctor returns, only his left arm, the hems of his trousers, and his shoes are wet.

"How did you stay so dry?" Percy asks, looking up from his book.

"Remembered I had an umbrella." He reaches into his jacket, reveals an umbrella with what Percy feels to be an unnecessarily dramatic flourish, then vanishes it back into his jacket. "Where are the others?"

"Rose said Oliver wandered off when they were looking for salt," Percy replies, and the irritation in his voice is clearly underlaid with worry. "She and Hermione went to look for him."

"Have you found anything?" the Doctor asks.

"Not unless you've got - " He sorts through the books, flipping it open, "- 'a box inlaid with trapping runes, made from the wood of an elder tree growing in a cemetery.'" He glances up. "Any chance on that?"

"Fresh out. I take it there's nothing else?"

"Everything else has the living intruders becoming ghosts as well. Either that or destroying the house along with the unhappy spirit. I don't gather either of those are quite your style."

"Not quite." The Doctor sucks his teeth. "I have an idea, but ... We'll keep looking. Where did you say the girls went?"

"I didn't, because I don't _know_." Percy sets his book aside. "They took off after Oliver and didn't exactly enter their itinerary with me."

"Calm down, tiger. I didn't kidnap your boyfriend."

"That being precisely the problem, because I don't know who did." He exhales heavily, then visibly draws himself up and in, reaching for the book. "I'll keep looking."

The Doctor is quiet for a moment, then sits on the other side of the pile of books, picking one up. He then stretches one leg out in front of him and props on the coffee table, too. Percy watches him narrowly, trying to figure out if he's being made fun of. Then the Doctor reaches for a book and smiles at Percy, and Percy is unable to help smiling back.

 

The entirety of the downstairs and half of the upstairs has been a wash. Every room already searched gets marked with a glowing 'X' floating in front of the door, which is useful, but unsettling to see done.

"So how come you haven't healed Percy's leg with magic?" Rose asks as Hermione marks a bedroom door with an 'X.'

"It's not that easy," Hermione answers. "Regular magic doesn't really have an answer for Muggle injuries. If all the bones in his leg were gone, it'd be an overnight stay in hospital and he'd be fine."

"If all the bones were gone?" Rose repeats, laughing. "Is that something that happens often?"

Despite herself, Hermione smiles. "Not that often. But it is an eventuality that does occur." She starts moving down the hall. "Furthermore, none of us are trained Healers. Oliver knows some medicinal magic because of Quidditch, but it really only goes as far as bandaging the break and making sure Percy isn't in pain."

Rose pushes open the next door, shining Oliver's wand into it in an initial scan for occupancy. The light catches on a large tri-mirrored vanity, the surface of which is covered in silver cosmetic tools - there's a hairbrush, a blush brush, lipstick pots, and cut glass perfume bottles, just for what she sees immediately. As she and Hermione step in, she finds a bed covered in dust, and an armoire hanging half-open, revealing moth-eaten dresses.

"I think this must have been Clara's room," Hermione says.

"I think," says a third voice, "you're right." Rose and Hermione whirl, and Clara smiles at them. She makes a slight gesture with her left hand, and the door closes behind her.

"This was my bedroom," she continues. She floats past the two living women to the vanity, lowering herself onto the bench. Her hands sink slightly into the surface of the vanity, and the mirror shows no reflection. "I came in here to get dressed before my wedding. I put the tiara right here - " she points - "while my mum did my hair. She asked me if it was Great-Grandma Melanie's. I told her that I thought so." Her fingers float across the back of the brush.

Rose's fingers curl around Hermione's arm, and slowly, they begin to back away, towards the door. Their progress is painstakingly slow, as Rose puts her foot back a little bit to test the creakiness of the floor before each step.

"Sometimes I think about what I would have done differently, if I'd known," Clara continues. She rests her chin on her hand, looking disconcertingly like a normal, living girl - minus the eerie glow and transparency, of course. “I don't think I would have invited the Doctor to the wedding. I think I would have just killed him where he stood.” She sighs, sinks into silence for a long moment. Rose’s free hand finds the door knob, and her stomach prickles with the realization that it’s not turning.

“You know,” Clara continues, “my grandmother helped me, too, before my wedding.” She turns, and smiles. “I think that she and my mum were standing right where you are now.”

Hermione's scream is suddenly and horribly cut off as freezing cold sweeps over. Her vision blurs, then clears just long enough for her to see a pair of translucent shoes over her own.

I'm inside her mum, she thinks vaguely, then everything goes black.

 

When Hermione comes to, her first thought is that her neck hurts. As does her head. And her fingers are uncomfortably cold.

“Hermione? Are you awake?”

She struggles to open her eyes, blinking up at a blurry-round-the-edges Percy leaning in front of her.

“Yes, I'm awake.” She leans forward, realizing she's in a chair, and curls her fingers into a fist to warm them up. Percy reaches for her hand and sandwiches her fingers between his own hands in an attempt to warm them. Percy's hands are always cold, so it doesn't actually help, but Hermione appreciates the effort. Before she asks anything stupid like ‘where are we,’ she looks around. They’re in a large room, lit by some sort of greenish-whitish light. Around the edges of the room stand silent, still shades, providing the illumination.

“Where's Oliver?” she asks, having ascertained that Rose is on her other side, also starting to come around. “And the Doctor?”

“Back here!” the Doctor’s voice calls from one of the corners. There's a brief burst of blue light, marking his location. “Just having a look around.” As Rose’s eyes adjust, she can see the Doctor getting very close to some of the ghosts on the perimeter, occasionally buzzing his sonic screwdriver right in their face. He leans back, fiddles with the setting, then buzzes the shade again. Whatever he sees, he's not happy about it.

“Are you all right?” Hermione asks Percy. “Did she get you too?”

Percy shakes his head. “We heard odd noises coming from here and went to investigate. You and Rose were already here.” He reaches out and brushes a curl behind her ear. “I'm glad you're okay.”

“So am I.”

Rose has turned in her chair, and she watches the Doctor, still buzzing at the shades with his sonic and apparently not quite finding what he's looking for.

“Doctor,” she calls, “what are you looking for?”

“Just testing out a hypothesis,” the Doctor replies. He taps the tip of the sonic absently against his teeth, then fiddles with another setting. This time, when he buzzes the ghost, it vanishes, dimming the glow of the room just a little. Hermione gasps.

“Where did it go?” Percy demands, standing up. Rose notices he's got a crutch that, somehow, bears a strong resemblance to an umbrella holder. The Doctor ignores them and sprints over to one of the windows. Rose joins him, and he fist-pumps triumphantly, pointing out the window.

“Oh, yes! Would you have a look at her?!”

“She's gone outside!” Rose realizes, seeing the single faintly glowing figure on the lawn. “You sent her outside with your sonic?”

“Ghost are just resonations of psychic frequencies,” the Doctor replies. “Just a question of resonating those frequencies to be in Point A instead of Point B.”

“Is that your plan for Clara?” Rose asks. “To zap her off somewhere else?”

“Well,” the Doctor begins. But before he can say anything else, the ghosts around the room glow more and more brightly, and Percy lets out a noise caught between a gasp and a scream.

“Oliver!”

Rose and the Doctor run to join them, and Rose sucks in a sharp breath at the sight before her. Oliver stands next to Clara, his skin a sickly grey, holding a knife to his own throat. His eyes are dull, staring unseeingly out at the assembled audience. Percy's skin is stark white, eyes wide and wild, the veins in his neck standing out.

“What have you done to him?!”

Clara looks at Oliver, her face softening. “He is preparing to leave this corruptible mortal state. Soon, he will be like me.”

“She's going to kill him!” Rose cries out.

“Oliver!” Hermione calls, her heartbreak in her voice. Maybe it's her imagination and the lighting, but he almost seems to react.

“Clara.” The Doctor holds up his hands to show he's unarmed. He takes a slow, careful step forward. “Why are you doing this?”

Clara lets out a bright, tinkling laugh, though the fire in her eyes betrays a different emotion altogether. “ _You_ have to ask that? _You_ , of all people? You have taken everything from me!” Her voice pitches into a scream. “You took my great-grandmother’s home! You ruined my family! And it's your fault I'm like this!” She gestures sharply to herself. Though she is small in stature, maybe a few inches shorter than Hermione or Rose, there is something enormous, and sad, about her - or maybe the potential she represents.

“Fine, so your quarrel is with me!” the Doctor replies. “Oliver is innocent! No one else has any part of this.” He takes another step forward.

Faster than thought, Clara points at the Doctor, and four shades appear around him - or, precisely, _in_ him. The Doctor lets out a strangled croaking noise and collapses in on himself, clutching his arms around himself in a desperate embrace.

“Stop it!” Rose screams, clearly teetering dangerously between pulling the Doctor out and not getting herself killed. “You're hurting him!”

“I know,” Clara replies, watching him coldly. “I'm killing him.”

The Doctor unbends one arm slowly and waves his fingers in a “yes hello I have a question” sort of way. When Clara doesn't respond immediately, he does it again, more vehemently. Clara makes a noise of irritation and gestures. The shades vanish, and the Doctor collapses into a chair, breathing hard. “Blimey, that was unpleasant. Can I say something?”

“I suppose you can have your last words,” Clara allows grudgingly.

“Let them go,” the Doctor repeats, his voice ragged. He gestures to the others.

“I'm not leaving without you,” Rose says immediately.

“You don't have a choice,” the Doctor replies.

“But why Oliver?” Hermione demands. “He has nothing to do with any of this!”

“He's a man of good Scottish stock, just like my fiancé was,” Clara responds simply. She reels furiously on the Doctor again. “The fiancé you stole from me! The life you stole from me!” She turns to brush her fingers across Oliver's cheek. He stirs, slightly, the knife pressing deeper into his skin. “I will have my wedding.” She looks up. “And I will have my revenge.”

She makes a sharp, almost dismissive gesture. The shades around the wall vanish, then reappear, crowding around the living intruders.

“Wait!” Percy's voice is edged with pain. “Edward wasn't stolen from you! He's been looking for you!”

“What?” Clara flickers like static, then reappears, inches from Percy. “You picked a bad time to start joking.”

Percy shakes his head, then manages to pull a belt buckle out of his pocket with one shaking hand. “He hanged himself the day you died,” he gasps. “Hours after, the newspaper said.”

The shades blink out of existence as quickly as they appeared. Rose and Hermione hug, shivering, trying to warm up again. The Doctor sinks further into his chair, though his eyes stay trained on Percy.

“You're lying,” Clara says softly.

“I can bring him here,” the Doctor says. Clara's face hardens.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Watch.” Levering himself out of the chair, the Doctor take the buckle out of Percy's hand and sets it on the floor. He pulls his sonic screwdriver from his jacket and buzzes it. For a long moment, nothing happens. Then, slowly, white fog begins to swirl around the buckle, forming into identifiable shoes, legs, torso. Finally, a handsome, rather bewildered-looking young man stands before them, atop the buckle. He looks around, then his eyes land on Clara, and nothing else matters.

“All right, Clara?” he says softly. Clara sobs and throws herself at him, burying her face in his neck. She looks to the Doctor, tears painting shimmering tracks down her cheeks.

“How? After so long - how?”

The Doctor smiles. “He was waiting for you outside the whole time. I just invited him in.”

Hermione, taking advantage of the distraction, hurries over to Oliver. He's coming around as though waking up from a spell, shivering, and he's glad enough to receive her embrace when she flings her arms around him.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Nothing a pot of tea and a fire can't fix,” Oliver answers. He looks, blearily, around. “Who's that? Why do I have a knife?”

Hermione hugs him more tightly. “It’s a long story.”

Rose watches the exchange between them with confusion. She looks at Percy. “Hermione told me you and she were together.”

“We are,” Percy confirms.

“But it looks like she's with Oliver.”

The back of his neck reddens. “She is.”

“And the way you were acting about Oliver earlier?”

“Us too.”

“Blimey.” Rose considers. “The line for the toilet in the morning must be a nightmare.”

While all this is happening, the other shades are reappearing, but seemingly differently than before. Now, instead of repeating the same motions over and over again, caught in a loop of the past, they talk amongst themselves freely, some looking around in surprise. One of the ghosts recovers himself quickly, going over to Clara and Edward, who have not stopped embracing. He gestures to the front of the room where the wedding arch still stands. As he gets closer, Rose can see that he wears a clerical collar.

Within moments, the other ghosts have arranged themselves into the chairs, and the living visitors make room for themselves where they can. Edward and Clara stand before the preacher and his voice echoes throughout the room.

“Do you, Edward Gracey, take Clara Oswald to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do.”

“Clara Oswald, do you take Edward Gracey to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

Clara's smile is radiant. “I do.”

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.” Edward takes her around the waist and kisses her, and the applause is thunderous. At the piano, one of the shades begins to play, and Clara and Edward begin their first and last dance.

 

The next morning, the grass is rapidly drying out in the strong sunshine, and even the ruins of the Oswald house look, somehow, peaceful and beautiful.

“You're offering us a ride back to London in a police box?” Hermione asks. “Won't it be cramped?”

“Only a little,” the Doctor replies cheerfully. He unlocks the door to the TARDIS, brightly lit, interior humming along like it never stopped. He grins from ear to ear and pushes the door the rest of the way open for the others to follow him in.

“An Undetectable Extension Charm, of course!” Percy says. The tone of his voice is so self-satisfied it hardly leaves any room for argument.

“Something like that,” the Doctor agrees, winking at Rose, whose smothers a giggle. The Doctor starts running around the center console, flipping levers and pushing buttons. A wheezing, trumpeting sound fills the air, and slowly, the blue box and its occupants fade from view.

A wind stirs the trees around the Oswald home, almost seeming to carry words on it in a sweet woman’s whisper:

_Hurry back..._

_Hurry ba-ack..._

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, the usual: none of them are mine, and I'm not making any money off of this.
> 
> Thanks go out to so many people for this: to the kind folks who posted ridethroughs of the Haunted Mansion on YouTube (specifically, DLPGuide's [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzlg0_di3iI) of Phantom Manor and BigFatPanda's [tribute](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj81eSLiRgo) to the Haunted Mansion); to Stancey, my thorough and absolutely fantastic beta; to my husband, my first and most patient sounding board; and finally, to Walt, for everything.
> 
> Happy Halloween!


End file.
